Book Details
| Title: | Son of Fletch | |
| Author: | Gregory Mcdonald | |
| Times Read: | 1 | |
| Last Read: | 01.15.25 |
Other Books Read By This Author (9)
- Carioca Fletch
- Confess, Fletch
- Fletch
- Fletch and the Man Who
- Fletch and the Widow Bradley
- Fletch Too
- Fletch Won
- Fletch's Fortune
- Fletch's Moxie
| Date Read | Note |
| 01.15.25 | The 10th and penultimate Fletch book, and also perhaps the last Fletch book to feature Irwin Maurice? Perpetuating the series via progeny is a logical choice after 9 books covering the character from young upstart through wealthy press secretary for a presidential candidate. I thought that Mcdonald would have to do some serious retconning or invent another woman in Fletch's past to accomplish this though but I was wrong. The "seed" was planted fair and square pretty early in the series! Gotta give Mcdonald credit for that... My assumptions were correct however in that Fletch Jr. is basically the same character as Fletch Sr. This book is a hand-off between the two basically leaving the younger exactly where the older started this journey. What was more interesting to me with this book is that Fletch Sr. all of a sudden lives in Tennessee with a southern partner. Now that I'm through it I think that choice was more functional than anything else - I don't think there were neo-nazi camps right outside LA or Boston or Italy in the 90s - but the jarring setting change made me look up the publication date to see that about a decade had passed between books. This probably explains the couple passages of previous books that are quoted here... something audiences in the early 90s might've needed but were still very clear in my mind having just read them. I can't fault their inclusion but I do think it's interesting that Mcdonald didn't feel they were needed when he was hopping all around Fletch's timeline earlier in the series but he did here. For example, having Gail Stanwyk pop up in Carioca Fletch with no reminder or context was way more challenging to my memory than having Fletch recall the time he was in a slave-holding cave in Africa. But whatever. The plot of this one involves a neo-nazi camp in northern Alabama. There's no murder to be solved per se but rather Fletch Sr. is put in a difficult position when prison escapees take refuge on his property and he's compelled to help them. In that regard, the stuff that happens at the camp itself felt pretty random and inconsequential to me. I was more worried that Mcdonald felt the need to kill off Fletch Sr. in order to start following Fletch Jr. in future books, so that murder could've happened at any point without notice or warning. Double that with Fletch Sr.'s more or less passenger state through most of the book - at first I thought it would be about how Fletch finesses his captors in typical Fletch fashion but that proves not to be the case - and it made for a less riveting read for me compared to the rest of the series. I think the book spends a decent amount of time setting up this question of is Fletch Jr. a good guy or bad guy or is he even related to I.M. Fletcher, but on a meta level I know there's one more book and I've read that Mcdonald intended to keep the series going with the son so those questions were pre-answered for me. Michael Connelly wrote a similar book where his Terry McCaleb character investigates Harry Bosch, the problem being readers have already spent like 8 books with Bosch so wtf (my guess on that book was that he wrote it as a sequel film since Clint Eastwood played McCaleb in his adaptation of Blood Work so it would be a way to introduce the Bosch character on the big screen). In any case, If you combine those factors with the more topical vibe of neo-nazis being much more prominent now than they were in the 90s (and we thought it was a problem then!), you get a plot that didn't really resonate with me. They can't all be gold! Side Note: The publisher re-released this whole series in 2018 it looks like with nicely-designed book covers and ebook versions, but for some reason this book (and this book alone) is not available in my country. Obviously I was still able to read it because the Internet but wtf? Take a perfectly nice 11-book set then put Jon Hamm on one cover and make another one unavailable? Talk about triggering some OCD... |
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